LENA KUCHLER

                                                                    LENA KUCHLER
                                                                      A HEROINE
Lena was born in 1910 and grew up in Wieliczka, Poland. After completing her studies in the Hebrew gymnasium (Lena was a Polish Jew) in Krakow, she went on to study philosophy, psychology and pedagogy. During the Holocaust, Lena lost her own daughter but saved the children of others from death. After the Jews in her city were deported to Belzec, Lena managed to make her way to Warsaw where she lived under an alias, which she used to help smuggle children out of the Ghetto.
A well-known story tells how in June 1942, Lena found a live baby lying on top of the corpse of its mother. Tucking the baby under her coat, Lena smuggled the baby out of the Ghetto. She found it refuge.

After the war, Lena returned home only to discover that her family and neighbours had all been driven away by anti- Semitism and that her sister, Fela, had been killed by the Gestapo.
Lena went to the Jewish Committee Center in Krakow where surviving Jews could obtain food, water and clothing, as well as to locate family members. There she discovered dozens of abandoned Jewish children, ages 3-15, and became determined to help them. Lena obtained the necessary food, clothing and medical aid and found a large estate in Zakopane to establish a children's home. However, hostility from Polish neighbours and a resulting attack by Polish villagers who tried to murder the 100 children she was protecting forced Lena to relocate. In 1949, Lena finally managed to take all the children through France and into Israel, where she brought them to the Schiller Kibbutz.